5 Tips For Mom And Dad From A World-Class Negotiator

My father, Herb Cohen, wrote the book "You Can Negotiate Anything" in our basement, in longhand, when I was 11. It’s his story I tell in my new memoir "The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World’s Greatest Negotiator." A Brooklyn-born smart-ass, Herbie turned his street smarts into business savvy, and had, by the time he put his philosophy on paper, consulted and advised the FBI, CIA, State Department, Fortune 500 companies, and the Carter and Reagan administrations.

His book, which sold over a million copies is now, 42 years after publication, considered a How-To Business Classic. Having read it in manuscript and a dozen times since, it’s only recently, as a father myself, that I’ve realized what it’s really all about: parenting.

If you broaden your definition of the art, you will see that, before you even pick up a phone or think about an office, you are negotiating with your spouse, your kids, everyone. That was one of his messages: you don’t have to fear negotiation because, know it or not, you’re negotiating all the time.

To make the point, he opened the book, not in the White House or in some boardroom, but in a restaurant called Henrici’s in Northbrook, Illinois, where he’d taken my mother, my older siblings and myself for a fancy meal.

At 9, I hated meals served by waiters in the dark. Thus, halfway through the shrimp cocktail, I stood on the table and shouted, “This is a crummy restaurant!” Embarrassment and a quick exit followed. I was not taken out to dinner again for nearly a decade, which is exactly what I wanted. To Herbie, this proved I was a natural-born negotiator. Though in a position of weakness – who is weaker than the youngest sibling? – I’d been able to flip the tables (or stand on them) to achieve my goal.

I have since repurposed several of his negotiating tips for use in the art of parenting.

Here are five:

1. Power is based on perception.

If you think you got it, you got it, even if you don’t got it. If you don’t think you got it, even if you got it, you don’t got it. See the story above. All the power was seemingly on the parental side, which did not prevent the 9 year old from using his weakness as a strength. That is, I had power because I believed I had power. And, because they believed it, too — shame, there is no stronger card to play — I was soon on my way back home.

2. The key is to care, but not that much.

Herbie preaches detachment. If you approach life like a game, like it matters, but not that much, you will have more fun, and, as a result, be more successful. An example? Youth sports. The parents who care too much diminish their quality of life and that of their kids, and it never helps anyway. Whereas the parents who don’t care, or care just a little, let their kids find their way to the right teams, where they develop; the kids of parents caught in a fit of over-caring burn out and quit.

3. Don’t become attached to a particular outcome.

If every relationship is a negotiation, every goal you set for your child is merely a target, not a destination. Life happens along the way, storms appear. If you become fixated on a certain goal, if it’s that or nothing, you will make mistakes and miss newly emerging outcomes. Plan B might slowly reveal itself to be the true Plan A. You might even consider that original goal as a kind of McGuffin, a mechanism that got you where you need to go. You see this in the college application process. Parents who become fixated on a school or set of schools miss out on contingencies that were probably a better choice from the start.

4. Include your opponents in the planning.

If you let your kids help create the plan — for homework, for college, etc. — incorporate their ideas in your solutions, they will have a stake in the process and in making it a success.

5. Win-Win.

Most people inhabit a Win-Lose environment. They do not feel they’ve won unless the other person has lost. You see it in politics. You see it in labor strife. Not only is this a recipe for unhappiness, it’s a design for failure. If one side is humiliated or forced to admit defeat, you’ve guaranteed the person on the other side, “the loser” — this is even more so when it’s your kid — will find a way to blow up whatever plan has been made. You should engage those closest to you in a negotiation. They get some of what they want. You get some of what you want. And you both walk away believing you’ve won. And so both work to uphold the agreement.

📖 You may purchase "The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator" on Amazon

Rich Cohen is writer at large for Air Mail and columnist at The Paris Review. He is the author of Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent Tough Jews; Monsters; Sweet and Low; When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead (with Jerry Weintraub); The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones; and The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse. He resides in Connecticut.